95.5 FM “The Heat’s” DJ J Easy on 50 Years of Hip-Hop
Hip-hop began 50 years ago in The Bronx. While it has evolved into a mainstream, commercially successful genre in those five decades, its roots and its heart are with indy performers who create art from available pre-existing media blended and personalized into original expressions. There are “Five Pillars of Hip-Hop,” these include MCing (or rapping), break dancing, graffiti art, knowledge of self and the movement.
The first “pillar,” however, is DJ’ing. DJs or “disc jockeys” are the people who play, blend, and curate recorded music for live audiences or on radio stations like Utica’s hip-hop radio station, 95.5 FM “The Heat.”
Over the next week, I will bring you recorded interviews with 95.5 FM’s “Heat Squad,” who talk about the art form, how it evolved, and its cultural impact globally and locally.
First up is 95.5 FM’s DJ J Easy, who explains what equipment he uses to DJ his show on 95.5 FM The Heat. “If you’re good, you can blend the second song into the first. That takes skill.” He also talks about how he got into the business and started working at Phoenix Radio. I asked his advice for young people interested in getting into the business.
“Pick who you want to listen to,” he said. “Like your favorite artists, learn their story a little bit…I like to see who wrote the song and who produced the song. If you notice, everyone has their particular styles.”
Like Ron Klopfanstein at Facebook.com/ReadRonKlopfanstein, Follow him at Threads.net/@RonKlopfanstein, Instagram.com/RonKlopfanstein, Twitter.com/RonKlopfanstein, and Tiktok.com/@ronklopfanstein Read all his work at Muckrack.com/ron-klopfanstein. Ron appears on “The Hot Seat with Cassandra Harris Lockwood” on the last Monday of each month at 5 p.m. tune into 95.5 “The Heat” or stream it live at 955TheHeat.com.
